You may remember an article written back in March by this author shining a light on the escapades going on in Tennessee called Volunteers in the Volunteer State asked to volunteer even more. What used to be an unbelievable story has become a menagerie of unimaginable activities poised to kill our brothers and sisters.

It seems that volunteer firefighters in Tennessee will be forced to attend 16 (you read that right- sixteen) hours of mandatory training before they are allowed to respond to emergencies.

How many did they need before?

According to a story in timesnews.net, the state is having trouble establishing uniformity in the number of training hours required.  How did they settle on sixteen hours?

But wait, there’s more.

Some counties are attempting to “opt out” of the requirement.  Can’t afford it.  Don’t got the time.  Don’t need another unfunded mandate.

I know money is tight, but are we truly to the point where we send untrained young men and women into an interior attack with other untrained men and women?  Departments crying poor feel it’s acceptable to set their personnel up for such danger without being equipped with the training necessary to keep them alive?

If we can’t afford to train, we can’t afford to send brave souls into harms way.

This from the timesnews.net:

“It boils down to the fact that when you put a volunteer firefighter out there … if he has made the decision not to have training, that’s fine because he takes his own life into his own hands,” said state Rep. John Litz, D-Morristown. “But the thing I’m concerned about is by him not having this training is the simple fact that he not only takes his own life into account, but he may take mine into account, too, because my house may be the one on fire that he is trying to get me out of.”

To be clear:

Firefighters need more than 16 hours of training before entering a burning building.

Fire Departments/Districts need to pony up the bucks for the training- not rely on the personal bank accounts of firefighters to pay for it.

Anyone?

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